Internet: Stop being so Internety

Recently Gap redesigned their
logo and I’m
bothered by how we, the design community, are often responding. Dribbble and
Twitter are great tools. I use both of them frequently. They are also vessels
for people to freely speak their mind. Unfortunately, it’s too often used to
degrade and belittle other people’s work.

Regardless of whether the design is good or bad, someone or some group of people
probably put a lot of time and hard work into it. Not everything you’ve ever
produced has been great, I guarantee it. You didn’t have hundreds of designers
telling you how bad it was and recreating their own asinine versions of it.

Do you think the designers of the Gap logo aren’t aware of Dribbble and Twitter?
Imagine how you’d feel if you received this kind of feedback on this grand a
scale. You’d probably stop designing forever (and no, that’s not what we want
the Gap logo designers to do).

There is a proper way to provide constructive feedback. The proper way is not to
make a logo that says “Crap” instead of Gap. That’s not clever or funny, it’s
hurtful and pointless. However, there have been some
goodresponses from people that think the logo
is not very good. We should follow their example instead of just insulting the
original designers.

We as designers need feedback, it’s how we make design great. It’s helpful if
someone says a design is not good, especially if they can point out key things
that might not be working. It’s not helpful if someone says “Oh my god this logo
is so bad I’m not even a designer and I could make a better logo.”

So often I hear about great stories of how wonderful the design community is,
donating time or money and often banding together to help someone overcome some
great hurdle. Why does there have to be a polar opposite of this? Act like an
adult, have some pride in your image, and stop bashing other people’s work - you
might be in their shoes someday.